What do you have to consider when writing an instruction for a work?
Work instructions are common and necessary in many industries, especially in production, but also in studies, to ensure that test subjects are treated equally. Work instructions also make sense during onboarding, in order to explain to new employees how to carry out tasks correctly right from the start. Read what you have to consider when you write a work instruction, what belongs in a work instruction and which legal aspects come into play with a work instruction.
Contents
What is a work instruction?
What are the goals of the work instructions?
Create work instruction: template for a work instruction
1. Who must follow the work instruction?
2. What needs to be done?
3. How must this work be done?
4. What must the work be done with?
5. What does this work need to be done for?
6. Where does the work need to be done?
7. How much needs to be made?
8. How long does the work take to complete?
9. How well does the work need to be done?
10. How safely does the work have to be carried out?
Writing work instructions: tips for language, style and format
1. Clear language
2. Accessible
3. Uniformly designed
4. Visual
5. Competent
6. Tested
Legal aspects of the work instruction
What distinguishes the work instruction from a process description?
What is a work instruction?
In a work instruction, an employer records how an employee has to complete a specific task and which ones individual steps must be carried out. A work instruction therefore explains exactly who has to do what, when and how and ensures that an employee can complete a specific work in full and with consistent quality.
What are the goals of the work instructions?
The main goal of a work instruction is uniform work steps set and thus ensure the consistent quality of a product or service. In addition, work instructions help to preserve and standardize internal company knowledge. Ideally, work instructions describe the most efficient and best course of actionto do a job. They therefore help to avoid errors and the resulting corrections and can save costs in the long term, whether for error correction or training.
A special form of the work instruction concerns the Regulation of the operational order: In addition to work instructions for carrying out recurring activities, there are also those that concern, for example, observing working hours, the private use of work equipment or customer contact.
Create work instruction: template for a work instruction
What must be included in a work instruction? Of course, the content of a work instruction depends on the work that it explains. In general, however 10 key questions define that a work instruction should answer. If you use these 10 questions as a template for your work instructions, you have a good basis:
1. Who must follow the work instruction?
An who judges the work instruction? Who must do the work stated in it? This can be workers on a specific machine, employees in specific positions or entire teams, for example in a service center.
2. What needs to be done?
What work needs to be done? outline, what activity must be carried out.
3. How must this work be done?
Describe them Step-by-step in detail, how a specific work must be carried out. The entire workflow must be explained from start to finish. This may be the central point of a work instruction. If possible, use visual aids to explain individual work steps, such as videos, screenshots, screencasts, tables or flow charts.
Visual work instructions with Snagit
With Snagit you create and edit screenshots or screencasts easily and efficiently. Download the free trial and see how easy it is to create visual work instructions.
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4. What must the work be done with?
Which tools, machines, software or devices are required for work? How must these be handled?
5. What does this work need to be done for?
What is the Purpose work? Explaining the need for a specific task can have a positive impact on employee acceptance and motivation.
6. Where does the work need to be done?
Is there a specific workplace where the work needs to be done? Can an employee do that? place of execution decide for yourself or are there precise specifications?
7. How much needs to be made?
Especially in production need target amounts be formulated. However, quantities can also be useful in service, for example how many customer calls are to be made per hour.
8. How long does the work take to complete?
What is the time commitment? If possible, he can too Time required for each individual step To be defined. Alternatively, the average time or a target time for completing the overall task can be specified. However, this should be close to reality and not unrealistic.
9. How well does the work need to be done?
Which Quality must have the result of the work? Consistently good quality is particularly important in production or services and ensures continuity.
10. How safely does the work have to be carried out?
What specifications for occupational safety or about safety standards there?
Writing work instructions: tips for language, style and format
In order for a work instruction to be followed, it must be clearly written, logically structured and easily accessible. Follow these tips when writing a statement for a thesis:
1. Clear language
A work instruction should be able to be understood immediately by every employee. Avoid compound sentences, foreign words, compound or very long words, unfamiliar technical terms or abbreviations. If technical language must be used, you should use a glossary to explain technical terms and abbreviations.
Don’t use different words for the same thing: Important terms and technical terms should be used unchanged. Repetitions do not have to be avoided, in fact, they are even desirable in work instructions – it is not about literary qualities, but clarity.
Write active sentences with a clear structure (ideally subject – predicate – object) so that it is immediately clear who has to do what and how. The shorter and simpler, the better.
2. Accessible
Make sure that employees always have access to the work instructions – even if they work remotely or outside the company. If access is not possible anytime and anywhere, a work instruction simply cannot be used.
3. Uniformly designed
If many work instructions are used in your company, then make sure that the design is uniform: design, layout, language, storage location and storage medium should be as uniform as possible or follow a concept. This helps the employees to find the work instructions, to understand them and to quickly find their way around them.
4. Visual
Visual information helps with understanding. The saying “A picture says more than a thousand words” also applies to work instructions. Whether schematic representations, screenshots or videos – visual representations can usually explain work steps more easily and in a way that is easier to understand than long texts. This applies in particular to manual work steps on a machine or working on a computer.
Screenshots of the screen surface are suitable for work instructions on the computer. Tools like Snagit are ideal for this. You can then prepare your screenshots in the integrated Snagit editor: add numbers, frames, arrows or comments to clearly describe the individual work steps.
VR is also increasingly being used to explain work steps and for work instructions, for example to train people to work on machines or in the medical field.
Explain work steps on screen with Snagit
Snagit helps you create schematic work instructions. Edit images or screenshots, add numbers and text to explain individual work steps. Get your free trial today!
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5. Competent
A work instruction should be written by those employees who really deal with the work and the individual work steps know about. So there can’t be just one person in a company who writes all the work instructions. However, it is conceivable to entrust the final editing and design to specialists in order to ensure the quality of the language and design.
6. Tested
Once you have completed the work instructions, you should definitely test them before use, if possible with employees who are not yet familiar with the work described. Monitor the application of the work instruction and log where it is Problems indicates which steps are not clear enough or are not described clearly enough. Improve the work instruction until it meets all quality criteria.
If you are checking a work instruction for tasks on the computer, you can document the test with a screen recording in order to evaluate it afterwards. Use recording tools like Snagit, which easily create a screencast.
Legal aspects of the work instruction
A work instruction serves to specify the work obligation of employees in a legally binding manner. Employees are legally obliged to comply with work instructions. The condition is, however, that the work instructions from the respective Signed by the employee’s manager is that it conforms to the law and takes occupational safety into account.
If an employee refuses or disregards a legally compliant work instruction, he risks a warning. If an employee believes that the work instruction is illegal, a judicial review is recommended.
What distinguishes the work instruction from a process description?
There is a lot of overlap between a job description and a process description: both document each other repetitive workflows and recurring processes. Both serve to preserve knowledge and work efficiently. However, a process description can be used for many types of business processes and does not necessarily represent a legally binding work instruction that must be followed step-by-step. In addition, a process description does not necessarily have to name individual steps, as work instructions usually do. A process description can also be used to document general processes or best practices in a company.
Disclaimer: This post does not constitute legal advice. Please consult an employment law expert.